Page 10 - ELG1810 Oct Issue 461

RESEARCH NEWS .

Bilingual children who speak native

languages at home score higher on

non-verbal intelligence tests

By Federica Tedeschi language in order to determine correlated to cognitive ability. importance of the parents’ role
Migrant children who use L1 in whether, and to which extent, In terms of productive lexis and the parents’ educational
their family score higher on both it was the dominant language. the researchers found that background was also noted.
vocabulary and IQ tests than Use of such questionnaires has the monolinguals outperformed The study claims to be the first
those who don’t, according to a proved a reliable tool for L1 the bilinguals. in the field of bilingual advantage
UK study which controlled for acquisition research. However, when it came to to ‘include the aspect of
parental education. The study investigated the receptive vocabulary, there was a parental support’.
Researchers from the University positive relation between gap in the size of L2 vocabulary, However, the researchers
of Reading analysed data from bilingualism and cognition but this disappeared when point out that all participants in
100 Turkish–English bilingual and wanted to prove that ‘the vocabulary size in both languages the sample were from middle-
children aged 7-11 and from bilingual vocabulary and its taken together was calculated. class families with at least one
their parents. The more parents development plays a crucial role The study also showed that the graduate parent, suggesting
used L1 at home, the higher their for this cognitive advantage’. size of receptive vocabulary was that conclusions cannot
children scored in non-verbal Researchers analysed the correlated more strongly with necessarily be extended to
intelligence tests. None of the vocabulary size of their sample, IQ than the productive other bilingual settings and that
Turkish children in the study which also included two control vocabulary size. further studies of the subject
were part of a wider Turkish groups: 25 English monolingual The receptive vocabulary was needed to address groups from a
speaking community. children living in the UK and measured through a yes-no format variety of socio-economic and
At least one parent in every 25 Turkish monolingual children and included some pseudo-words educational backgrounds.
family had a degree. All the in Turkey. The bilingual children that followed the phonological Dr Daller and Dr Ongun
children were UK born and were from homes where Turkish was patterns of the language but do also stressed the pedagogical
‘successive or sequential’ bilingual dominant outperformed the other not exist. Children’s productive and language policymaking
who spoke Turkish from birth groups. vocabulary was quantified by implications of their study by
and who started learning English However there was no counting the recorded number showing that ‘Language policy
around the age of three. significant difference between of words children produced in that advocates the use of the
The children’s non-verbal monolingual children and a specific semantic category in dominant language in society
intelligence was quantified bilinguals when those children two minutes. at home may not be in the best
using tests of abstract graphical whose families used Turkish less Results also highlighted how interest of bilingual children.’
patterns. often were included. This suggests concepts first developed in L1
To obtain verifiable results the that maintaining L1 as the are more easily available in L2 ■ Bilingual children who speak native
researchers, Michael Daller and dominant language in the home for bilinguals, further evidence language at home score higher on non-
Zehra Ongun, also asked both may give children a non-verbal that using L1 at home can help verbal intelligence tests
parents to fill in a questionnaire cognitive advantage. children develop their cognitive Authors: Michael Daller, Zehra
to quantify the use of Turkish Vocabulary size is also highly development. The strategic Ongun, University of Reading
10 October 2018